More feedback on vehicle health

[Bufl4x]

Fact:
In real life any vehicle driver/pilot gets a lot of instruments that provide feedback on any damage. Pilots can see bulletholes and missing wings, drivers will know about a flat tire or a busted track.

Problem:
In PR there are only four uneven damage states; perfect, white smoke, black smoke and dead in 5 seconds, with even the light damage (white smoke) being a warning too late.
These effect however are only clearly visible to an outside observer, not the operator of the vehicle.
Thanks to bf2 collisions there are so many things to take damage from, like bushes, it's hard to keep track of the well being of one's precious asset while navigating across 16km2 of funny bf2 terrain.

Suggestion:
Make these four states visible for the driver/pilot in any way.
Either show a different quarter of the original healthbar for a few seconds at the beginning of every state, or allow the driver to see the vehicle's healthbar from outside if it drops below 80%.

[DeltaFart]

Fact show me a source for your fact and then we'll talk about that
But I do agree it gets annoying not being able to tell how bad you are untiil you're dead

[Psyko]

Fact show me a source for your fact and then we'll talk about that
But I do agree it gets annoying not being able to tell how bad you are untiil you're dead

counter productive. your asking for a reference to a first person perspective to a vehicle's damage status? doesnt work

an artistic approach is needed.

[DeltaFart]

If ya read what he said thats why I said that because I was not aware of a display that told the commander of a tank that his second wheel on the right side was cracked after an explosion

[Bufl4x]

Of course i would prefer 3d instruments but thats too much work for too little gain. I could google you thousands of cockpit pictures and a million dashboards but i dont feel that's needed to prove my point. In real life you got better feedback on damaged parts and your vehicle's ability to function properly, therefore i would like to have more in PR as well.

[Astromici]

This is true. A system needs to be implemented where the crew of a vehicle can tell how badly damaged their machine is. Perhaps some sort of way to make a damaged vehicle less effective, before the point of having components disabled? Smoke going right in the driver's eyes or some sort of hissing/clunking sound may do the trick for moderate damage (25-50%).

[PLODDITHANLEY]

The CO can see vehicle state.

[Bringerof_D]

i dont think the op literally meant instrumentation that measured vehicle health status IRL. But yes in game it is direly needed, a man driving a car would know when he busted his suspension going over a berm. or he'd probably notice his plane is missing several feet of it's wing (trust me pilots are very sensitive to that kind of thing, slightest change and the aircraft acts differently and most pilots would realize something's not right (assuming it's minor damage that hasn't taken out any hydraulics or other important things, thus setting off an alarm)

hell i'd like to know when a 30mm AP shell has punched a hole in my turret. but hasnt critically damaged me.

several immediate signs you've taken damage IRL:

- Broken parts (Your cup holder is no longer holding your coffee...because half of the cup holder is gone.)
- Burning (This one's a dead give away that somethings not right.)
- a hole in the wall or window
- deformed surfaces (hood of your car bulging a bit?)
- certain things may cease to function (You're the gunner, your bowels no are no longer under your control and the man below you is becoming very angry.)

[Ninja2dan]

This is actually something that I had been discussing a few years ago, and never quite understood what it hasn't been adopted in some manner already.

In real life there aren't any instruments to monitor vehicle "health", other than certain gauges for critical systems such as temps, pressures, liquid volume, etc. You know when your vehicle is overheating, low on fuel, leaking fluid, etc by closely monitoring those gauges. And of course, in some circumstances you can also feel the handling of the vehicle is different, such as a wobbling steering wheel or the vehicle wants to lurch/jump/jerk around. When driving my M109, I usually knew if something serious was wrong like a thrown track, busted wheel, slipping transmission, etc.

But PR is a game that lacks much of the tactile feedback a real vehicle operator or crew has available, and as others have mentioned there is often no feedback at all if you've taken damage from a hit. Unless you have the rare occurrence of a critical failure or if an alarm is going off, you might not even know you're damaged at all.


What I would like to see eventually is some form of visual feedback on critical systems, as well as the introduction of increased critical failures. I'd like to see more kinds of failures such as jammed turrets, flat tires, broken axles, detracked tanks, etc and more of them. But I don't have a clue how hard it would be to add in, or how hard it would be to get it working as desired.

Even with the system as it is now, with its limited failures, I think adding some kind of visual status indicator would help. Nothing like the vanilla health bar, but at least something that shows you when something is busted and hopefully limits the amount of people entering into combat with a busted vehicle simply because they were unaware of just how bad off they are.

[dtacs]

Specialist kits can see vehicle health since they were built of the original BF2 engineer kit.

The crewman kit should also have this ability, it makes much more sense than the specialist having it.

[Bufl4x]

Anything simple would be sufficient and better than the current method but even if the crewman sees the vehicle health bar like the CO or a specialist, that still leaves pilots guessing.

Something very minimalist visual cue on the hud would be enough in my opinion. *** on hud indicates hardcodedness with a missing link though, but maybe playing with the original healthbar is possible to a limit.

[LongHairedHuman]

As already stated, a vehicle has 4 levels of damage, why not make an healthbar with 4 blocks, if the vehicle is smoking white, -1 bar, if the vehicle is smoking gray/black, -2 bar, if the vehicle is burning, -3 bar, if the vehicle is death, -4 bar (empty).

It would indicate when the vehicle reaches an difrent state, but not how far it is from a difrent state. And a side note, it CAN be allowed within PR, as it still is an game. As long as there is no visual reference counting the magazines in your pouches, there will be an magazine counter in the bottom right cornor. As long as there is no sound reference about you running energy, there will be an bar in the bottom left cornor. As long as there is no compass weapon, or comm rose command, there will be an compass on your screen.

I find that the vehicle healthbar is removed too soon, as there is no reference but the the smoke coming from your vehicle, what can barely be seen from some vehicle positions.

That is why I support this suggestion.

cheers,
- Human

[Tarranauha200]

No healthbars! Its just too vanilla. You already know those 4 stages if you are experienced crewman.
I would like to see some visual indicators too.
Maybe not at the top of Devs priority list but would be nice to have.

[sgt.coleslaw]

maybe something as simple as a flashing "!" on the bottom of the screen to let you know the vehicle has taken substantial damage but doesnt exactly tell you where. so you know its time to either RTB or at the very least pay more attention to your vehicle's health status

[HMARS]

After all, a modern tank has plenty of systems for detecting damage, fires, etc. A crewman should at least be able to tell if his emergency lights are on, or his tank is about to abort. "Your vehicle is at 68% health" is silly, but "oh look, the engine is on fire" is not.

[mat552]

Or, taking that a step further, "Turbine temperature is elevated and oil pressure is low"

[HMARS]

My worry is the a lot of this stuff might not be supported by the current engine... BF2 tanks were never originally meant as much more than a box and grenade launcher.